Die for Me
Page 17
Papy smiled wanly. “I asked you to come here to check on you and Georgia. Is this just a skirmish,” he said, glancing at the vase, “or a full-out war? Not that it’s any of my business. I’m just wondering when you’re planning on calling a truce and restoring peace to the household. If it goes on much longer, I might have to leave on an urgent unforeseen business trip.”
“I’m sorry, Papy,” I said. “It’s totally my fault.”
“I know. Georgia said that you and some young men left her stranded at a restaurant.”
“Yeah. There was kind of an emergency, and we had to leave.”
“And you didn’t have enough time to bring Georgia with you?” he asked skeptically.
“No.”
Papy took my arm and gently led me back toward the front of the store. “Doesn’t sound like the kind of thing you’d do, princesse. And it doesn’t sound very gentlemanly on the part of your escorts.”
I shook my head, agreeing, but there wasn’t anything I could say to defend myself.
We arrived at the front door. “Be careful who you choose to spend time with, chérie. Not everyone has a heart as good as yours.”
“Sorry, Papy. I’ll sort it out with Georgia right away.” I gave him a hug and walked out of the darkened room, blinking in the sunlight. And after picking up a bouquet of Gerbera daisies from a neighborhood florist, I went home for a last-ditch effort at making peace with my sister. I don’t know if it was the flowers that did the trick, or if she was just ready to forgive and forget. But this time, my apology worked.
Instead of discouraging me from seeing Vincent, Papy’s speech made me even more eager to see him. It had been a long five days, and though we planned to see each other over the weekend and talked by text and by phone every day, it seemed like an eternity. After my peacemaking mission with Georgia, I picked up the phone to call him. But before I finished dialing, I saw his name pop up on my screen and my phone began to ring.
“I was just calling you,” I said, laughing.
“Yeah, right,” his velvety voice came from the other end of the line.
“Is Ambrose up and about?” I asked. At my request, he had been giving me updates on his kinsman’s recovery. The day after he was stabbed the wound had begun closing up, and Vincent assured me that, as usual, Ambrose would be as good as new once he “woke up.”
“Yes, Kate. I told you he was fine.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s still hard for me to believe, that’s all.”
“Well, you can see him yourself if you want to come over. But do you want to go out first? Since we managed to handle Les Deux Magots without anyone being killed or maimed, I thought I might take you there again.”
“Sure. I’ve got a few hours until dinner.”
“Pick you up in five?”
“Perfect.”
Vincent was waiting outside on his Vespa by the time I got downstairs.
“You’re fast!” I said, taking the helmet from him.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he replied.
* * *
It was the first cold day of October. We sat outside the café on the boulevard Saint-Germain, under one of the tall, lamplike space heaters that sprout up on all the café terraces once it begins to get chilly out. Its radiating heat toasted my shoulders, while the hot chocolate warmed my insides.
“Now this is chocolate,” Vincent said as he poured the thick lava of melted chocolate into his cup and added steamed milk from a second pitcher. We sat and watched as people walked by, sporting coats, hats, and gloves for the first time that year.
Vincent leaned back in his seat. “So, Kate, my darling,” he began. I lifted my eyebrows, and he laughed. “Okay, just plain old Kate. In our agreed spirit of disclosure, I thought I would offer to answer a question for you.”
“What question?”
“Any question, as long as it pertains to the twenty-first and not the twentieth century.”
I thought for a moment. What I really wanted to know was who he was before he died. The first time. But he obviously wasn’t ready to tell me.
“Okay. When did you die the last time?”
“A year ago.”
“How?”
“A fire rescue.”
I paused, wondering how far he would let me go. “Does it hurt?”
“Does what hurt?”
“Dying. I mean, I suppose the first time it’s the same as any other death. But after that, when you die to save someone . . . does it hurt?”
Vincent studied my expression carefully before answering. “Just as much as if you, as a human, were hit by a subway train. Or asphyxiated under a pile of burning timbers.”
My skin crawled as I tried to wrap my mind around the fact that some people . . . or revenants . . . whatever . . . experienced the pain of death not just once but repeatedly. By choice. Vincent saw my unease and reached for my hand. His touch calmed me, but not in the supernatural way.
“Then why do you do it? Is this just about having an overblown sense of community service? Or repaying your debt to the universe for making you immortal? I mean, I respect the fact that you’re saving people’s lives, but after a few rescues, why don’t you just let yourself get older, like Jean-Baptiste, until you finally die of old age?” I paused. “Do you die of old age?”
Ignoring my last question, Vincent leaned in toward me and spoke earnestly, as if making a confession. “Because, Kate. It’s like a compulsion. It’s like pressure building up inside until you have to do something to get relief. The ‘philanthropic’ or ‘immortal’ motives wouldn’t make the pain and trauma worth it on their own. It’s going against our nature not to do it.”
“Then how has Jean-Baptiste resisted it for . . . what? Thirty years straight?”
“The longer you’re a revenant, the easier it gets to resist. But even with a couple of centuries under his belt, it takes him a mammoth amount of self-control. He has a really good reason, though. He not only shelters our little clan but supports other groups of revenants around the country. He can’t be dying left and right and still manage that much responsibility.”
“Okay,” I conceded. “I get it that you have a compulsion to die. But that doesn’t explain why, in between all the dying, you do things like dive into the Seine after a suicide attempt. You obviously weren’t going to die from that.”
“You’re right,” Vincent said. “The occasions where we actually die saving someone are rare. Once . . . twice a year at most. Usually we’re just doing things like preventing pretty girls from getting crushed by crumbling buildings.”
“Very suave,” I said, nudging him. “But that’s exactly what I mean. Where’s the reward in that? Is that a compulsion too?”
Vincent looked uncomfortable.
“What? That is a valid question. We’re still talking twenty-first century here,” I said defensively.
“Yeah, but we’re going a bit beyond the original question.” As he studied my stubborn expression, his cell phone rang.
“Whew, saved by the bell,” he said, winking at me as he answered. I heard a high-pitched, panicky voice coming from across the line. “Is Jean-Baptiste with you? Good. Just try to calm down, Charlotte,” he soothed. “I’ll be right there.”
Vincent pulled out his wallet and laid some change on the table. “It’s a family emergency. I have to go help out.”
“Can’t I come with you?”
He shook his head as we stood to leave. “No. There’s been an accident. It might be a bit”—he paused, weighing his words—“messy.”
“Who?”
“Charles.”
“And Charlotte’s there with him?”
Vincent nodded.
“Then I want to go. She sounded upset. I can help her while you take care of . . . whatever it is that you need to do.”
He looked up at the sky, as if waiting for some divine inspiration on how to explain things to me. “This isn’t how it usually goes. Like I was saying—we normally die for someone only once or maybe twice a year. It’s a fluke that Jules and Ambrose both died just as you and I started hanging out.”
We reached the scooter. Vincent unlocked it and put his helmet on.
“This is your life, right? And you promised not to hide things from me. So maybe this is something I should see if I want to know what hanging out with revenants really means.” A little voice inside me was telling me to give it up, to go home, and to stay out of Vincent’s “family’s” business. I ignored it.
He touched my stubbornly clenched jaw with one finger. “Kate, I really don’t want you to come. But if you insist, I’m not going to stop you. I hoped it would be longer before you had to see the worst of it, but you’re right—I shouldn’t shelter you from our reality.”
Pulling my helmet on, I tucked myself in behind him on the scooter. Vincent started the engine and headed toward the river. We drove past the Eiffel Tower and pulled over into a little park in front of Grenelle Bridge. I knew the spot because it’s the end of the line for sightseeing boats before they head back to the center of Paris.
One of those tour boats was pulled over to the riverbank, and in front of it an anxious crowd watched from outside a protective fence of police barriers. Two ambulances and a fire truck were parked on the lawn next to the river, their lights flashing.
Vincent propped the scooter against a tree without bothering to lock it up and, holding my hand, jogged up to the fence to speak with a policeman standing behind it. “I’m family,” he said to the man, who didn’t budge, but glanced inquiringly back at his superior.
“Let him through. He’s my nephew,” came a familiar voice, and Jean-Baptiste strode through a horde of paramedics and pushed the barrier aside to let us pass. Vincent kept his arm wrapped tightly around my waist, making it obvious that I was coming with him.
Now that we had an unobstructed view, I saw three bodies on the riverbank. One was a good distance away from the others. It was a little boy, probably five or six years old, and he was lying on a stretcher, wrapped in a blanket. A woman sat by his head, weeping silently as she rubbed his wet hair with a towel. After a moment, two paramedics flanking his small, shivering form helped him up to a seated position, facing away from the other two bodies, as they asked him and the woman questions. He was obviously okay.
Unlike the body laid out a few yards away. It was a little girl, probably the same age as the boy. Her head lay in a pool of blood. A distraught woman sat next to her, screaming unintelligibly.
Oh no, I thought. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to handle this. It took all my strength to stay calm and not burst into tears myself. I knew I wouldn’t be any help if I started losing it.
And finally, another ten feet away, was a third body—this one adult. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman because the face was covered in blood. An emergency blanket was draped over the body, which was long past needing it for warmth. They must be hiding something gory, I thought, and then my eyes fixed on the girl kneeling next to him.
Unlike the other survivors, Charlotte wasn’t hysterical. She was crying bitterly, but her body language communicated defeat rather than shock. Her hands were on the top of the blanket, pressing down on her brother’s corpse as if she was trying to keep him from flying up into the air. She looked around when Vincent called her name and, seeing us, stood.
“It’s going to be okay, Charlotte,” Vincent whispered once his arms were around her. “You know it is.”
“I know,” she sobbed. “But that doesn’t make it any easier. . . .”
“Shh,” Vincent cut her off, holding her against himself in a powerful embrace, before letting her go and handing her gently to me. “Kate came to be with you. She can take you home in a taxi now if you want.”
“No.” Charlotte shook her head, simultaneously reaching out to grasp my hand as if it were a safety net. “I’ll wait until you guys get him in the ambulance.”
Vincent turned to me. Will you be okay? he mouthed. I nodded, and he left us to walk toward Jean-Baptiste. The two men approached a third ambulance that had just arrived. Ambrose stepped down out of the passenger side of the cab looking as strong and healthy as a model on a gym brochure.
Charlotte had slumped back down to the ground and was running her hand over Charles’s blanket as if trying to warm him up with the friction. “So,” I said gently, “if you don’t want to talk about it, just say. But what happened?”
She exhaled deeply, her drawn face giving me a hint of what she would look like if she were her true age. She raised a trembling hand and pointed toward the deserted tourist boat. “The boat. It was rented for a children’s birthday party. Charles and I were walking nearby, with Gaspard volant, and he let us know before the two children fell in. Charles jumped in and reached the boy just after he went under. He swam him over to me on the shore, where I gave the child mouth-to-mouth. Then he went back for the little girl as the motor was pulling her under. He tried to get her, but the propeller hit her first. And then it got him.”
Her voice was numb as she recounted the story, but as soon as she finished, she began crying softly again, her shoulders shaking against my arm. I felt tears well up in my eyes and pinched myself hard. Get ahold of yourself, I thought. Charlotte doesn’t need you crying right along with her.
I looked down the bank toward the water as two police divers emerged. The paramedic standing next to Ambrose noticed them too and walked briskly in their direction. It wasn’t until he got a few feet away and they held an object toward him that I began to guess what was going on.
“I’m sorry, Papy,” I said. “It’s totally my fault.”
“I know. Georgia said that you and some young men left her stranded at a restaurant.”
“Yeah. There was kind of an emergency, and we had to leave.”
“And you didn’t have enough time to bring Georgia with you?” he asked skeptically.
“No.”
Papy took my arm and gently led me back toward the front of the store. “Doesn’t sound like the kind of thing you’d do, princesse. And it doesn’t sound very gentlemanly on the part of your escorts.”
I shook my head, agreeing, but there wasn’t anything I could say to defend myself.
We arrived at the front door. “Be careful who you choose to spend time with, chérie. Not everyone has a heart as good as yours.”
“Sorry, Papy. I’ll sort it out with Georgia right away.” I gave him a hug and walked out of the darkened room, blinking in the sunlight. And after picking up a bouquet of Gerbera daisies from a neighborhood florist, I went home for a last-ditch effort at making peace with my sister. I don’t know if it was the flowers that did the trick, or if she was just ready to forgive and forget. But this time, my apology worked.
Instead of discouraging me from seeing Vincent, Papy’s speech made me even more eager to see him. It had been a long five days, and though we planned to see each other over the weekend and talked by text and by phone every day, it seemed like an eternity. After my peacemaking mission with Georgia, I picked up the phone to call him. But before I finished dialing, I saw his name pop up on my screen and my phone began to ring.
“I was just calling you,” I said, laughing.
“Yeah, right,” his velvety voice came from the other end of the line.
“Is Ambrose up and about?” I asked. At my request, he had been giving me updates on his kinsman’s recovery. The day after he was stabbed the wound had begun closing up, and Vincent assured me that, as usual, Ambrose would be as good as new once he “woke up.”
“Yes, Kate. I told you he was fine.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s still hard for me to believe, that’s all.”
“Well, you can see him yourself if you want to come over. But do you want to go out first? Since we managed to handle Les Deux Magots without anyone being killed or maimed, I thought I might take you there again.”
“Sure. I’ve got a few hours until dinner.”
“Pick you up in five?”
“Perfect.”
Vincent was waiting outside on his Vespa by the time I got downstairs.
“You’re fast!” I said, taking the helmet from him.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he replied.
* * *
It was the first cold day of October. We sat outside the café on the boulevard Saint-Germain, under one of the tall, lamplike space heaters that sprout up on all the café terraces once it begins to get chilly out. Its radiating heat toasted my shoulders, while the hot chocolate warmed my insides.
“Now this is chocolate,” Vincent said as he poured the thick lava of melted chocolate into his cup and added steamed milk from a second pitcher. We sat and watched as people walked by, sporting coats, hats, and gloves for the first time that year.
Vincent leaned back in his seat. “So, Kate, my darling,” he began. I lifted my eyebrows, and he laughed. “Okay, just plain old Kate. In our agreed spirit of disclosure, I thought I would offer to answer a question for you.”
“What question?”
“Any question, as long as it pertains to the twenty-first and not the twentieth century.”
I thought for a moment. What I really wanted to know was who he was before he died. The first time. But he obviously wasn’t ready to tell me.
“Okay. When did you die the last time?”
“A year ago.”
“How?”
“A fire rescue.”
I paused, wondering how far he would let me go. “Does it hurt?”
“Does what hurt?”
“Dying. I mean, I suppose the first time it’s the same as any other death. But after that, when you die to save someone . . . does it hurt?”
Vincent studied my expression carefully before answering. “Just as much as if you, as a human, were hit by a subway train. Or asphyxiated under a pile of burning timbers.”
My skin crawled as I tried to wrap my mind around the fact that some people . . . or revenants . . . whatever . . . experienced the pain of death not just once but repeatedly. By choice. Vincent saw my unease and reached for my hand. His touch calmed me, but not in the supernatural way.
“Then why do you do it? Is this just about having an overblown sense of community service? Or repaying your debt to the universe for making you immortal? I mean, I respect the fact that you’re saving people’s lives, but after a few rescues, why don’t you just let yourself get older, like Jean-Baptiste, until you finally die of old age?” I paused. “Do you die of old age?”
Ignoring my last question, Vincent leaned in toward me and spoke earnestly, as if making a confession. “Because, Kate. It’s like a compulsion. It’s like pressure building up inside until you have to do something to get relief. The ‘philanthropic’ or ‘immortal’ motives wouldn’t make the pain and trauma worth it on their own. It’s going against our nature not to do it.”
“Then how has Jean-Baptiste resisted it for . . . what? Thirty years straight?”
“The longer you’re a revenant, the easier it gets to resist. But even with a couple of centuries under his belt, it takes him a mammoth amount of self-control. He has a really good reason, though. He not only shelters our little clan but supports other groups of revenants around the country. He can’t be dying left and right and still manage that much responsibility.”
“Okay,” I conceded. “I get it that you have a compulsion to die. But that doesn’t explain why, in between all the dying, you do things like dive into the Seine after a suicide attempt. You obviously weren’t going to die from that.”
“You’re right,” Vincent said. “The occasions where we actually die saving someone are rare. Once . . . twice a year at most. Usually we’re just doing things like preventing pretty girls from getting crushed by crumbling buildings.”
“Very suave,” I said, nudging him. “But that’s exactly what I mean. Where’s the reward in that? Is that a compulsion too?”
Vincent looked uncomfortable.
“What? That is a valid question. We’re still talking twenty-first century here,” I said defensively.
“Yeah, but we’re going a bit beyond the original question.” As he studied my stubborn expression, his cell phone rang.
“Whew, saved by the bell,” he said, winking at me as he answered. I heard a high-pitched, panicky voice coming from across the line. “Is Jean-Baptiste with you? Good. Just try to calm down, Charlotte,” he soothed. “I’ll be right there.”
Vincent pulled out his wallet and laid some change on the table. “It’s a family emergency. I have to go help out.”
“Can’t I come with you?”
He shook his head as we stood to leave. “No. There’s been an accident. It might be a bit”—he paused, weighing his words—“messy.”
“Who?”
“Charles.”
“And Charlotte’s there with him?”
Vincent nodded.
“Then I want to go. She sounded upset. I can help her while you take care of . . . whatever it is that you need to do.”
He looked up at the sky, as if waiting for some divine inspiration on how to explain things to me. “This isn’t how it usually goes. Like I was saying—we normally die for someone only once or maybe twice a year. It’s a fluke that Jules and Ambrose both died just as you and I started hanging out.”
We reached the scooter. Vincent unlocked it and put his helmet on.
“This is your life, right? And you promised not to hide things from me. So maybe this is something I should see if I want to know what hanging out with revenants really means.” A little voice inside me was telling me to give it up, to go home, and to stay out of Vincent’s “family’s” business. I ignored it.
He touched my stubbornly clenched jaw with one finger. “Kate, I really don’t want you to come. But if you insist, I’m not going to stop you. I hoped it would be longer before you had to see the worst of it, but you’re right—I shouldn’t shelter you from our reality.”
Pulling my helmet on, I tucked myself in behind him on the scooter. Vincent started the engine and headed toward the river. We drove past the Eiffel Tower and pulled over into a little park in front of Grenelle Bridge. I knew the spot because it’s the end of the line for sightseeing boats before they head back to the center of Paris.
One of those tour boats was pulled over to the riverbank, and in front of it an anxious crowd watched from outside a protective fence of police barriers. Two ambulances and a fire truck were parked on the lawn next to the river, their lights flashing.
Vincent propped the scooter against a tree without bothering to lock it up and, holding my hand, jogged up to the fence to speak with a policeman standing behind it. “I’m family,” he said to the man, who didn’t budge, but glanced inquiringly back at his superior.
“Let him through. He’s my nephew,” came a familiar voice, and Jean-Baptiste strode through a horde of paramedics and pushed the barrier aside to let us pass. Vincent kept his arm wrapped tightly around my waist, making it obvious that I was coming with him.
Now that we had an unobstructed view, I saw three bodies on the riverbank. One was a good distance away from the others. It was a little boy, probably five or six years old, and he was lying on a stretcher, wrapped in a blanket. A woman sat by his head, weeping silently as she rubbed his wet hair with a towel. After a moment, two paramedics flanking his small, shivering form helped him up to a seated position, facing away from the other two bodies, as they asked him and the woman questions. He was obviously okay.
Unlike the body laid out a few yards away. It was a little girl, probably the same age as the boy. Her head lay in a pool of blood. A distraught woman sat next to her, screaming unintelligibly.
Oh no, I thought. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to handle this. It took all my strength to stay calm and not burst into tears myself. I knew I wouldn’t be any help if I started losing it.
And finally, another ten feet away, was a third body—this one adult. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman because the face was covered in blood. An emergency blanket was draped over the body, which was long past needing it for warmth. They must be hiding something gory, I thought, and then my eyes fixed on the girl kneeling next to him.
Unlike the other survivors, Charlotte wasn’t hysterical. She was crying bitterly, but her body language communicated defeat rather than shock. Her hands were on the top of the blanket, pressing down on her brother’s corpse as if she was trying to keep him from flying up into the air. She looked around when Vincent called her name and, seeing us, stood.
“It’s going to be okay, Charlotte,” Vincent whispered once his arms were around her. “You know it is.”
“I know,” she sobbed. “But that doesn’t make it any easier. . . .”
“Shh,” Vincent cut her off, holding her against himself in a powerful embrace, before letting her go and handing her gently to me. “Kate came to be with you. She can take you home in a taxi now if you want.”
“No.” Charlotte shook her head, simultaneously reaching out to grasp my hand as if it were a safety net. “I’ll wait until you guys get him in the ambulance.”
Vincent turned to me. Will you be okay? he mouthed. I nodded, and he left us to walk toward Jean-Baptiste. The two men approached a third ambulance that had just arrived. Ambrose stepped down out of the passenger side of the cab looking as strong and healthy as a model on a gym brochure.
Charlotte had slumped back down to the ground and was running her hand over Charles’s blanket as if trying to warm him up with the friction. “So,” I said gently, “if you don’t want to talk about it, just say. But what happened?”
She exhaled deeply, her drawn face giving me a hint of what she would look like if she were her true age. She raised a trembling hand and pointed toward the deserted tourist boat. “The boat. It was rented for a children’s birthday party. Charles and I were walking nearby, with Gaspard volant, and he let us know before the two children fell in. Charles jumped in and reached the boy just after he went under. He swam him over to me on the shore, where I gave the child mouth-to-mouth. Then he went back for the little girl as the motor was pulling her under. He tried to get her, but the propeller hit her first. And then it got him.”
Her voice was numb as she recounted the story, but as soon as she finished, she began crying softly again, her shoulders shaking against my arm. I felt tears well up in my eyes and pinched myself hard. Get ahold of yourself, I thought. Charlotte doesn’t need you crying right along with her.
I looked down the bank toward the water as two police divers emerged. The paramedic standing next to Ambrose noticed them too and walked briskly in their direction. It wasn’t until he got a few feet away and they held an object toward him that I began to guess what was going on.
